Feminist essay a must-read for 16-year-old Swedes

Less than a month after it was revealed that the United Kingdom is planning to drop feminism from the A-level politics syllabus, every 16-year-old in Sweden is being given a copy of Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s call to arms, We Should All Be Feminists.

The essay, adapted from Adichie’s award-winning TED talk of the same name, is being distributed in Swedish to high-school pupils by the Swedish Women’s Lobby and ­publisher Albert Bonniers.

Launching the project at Norra Real high school in Stockholm, they said they hoped the book would “work as a stepping stone for a ­discussion about gender equality and feminism”.

“My own definition of a feminist is a man or a woman who says: ‘Yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better,’” Adichie writes.
“All of us, women and men, must do better.”

“This is the book that I wish all of my male classmates would have read when I was 16,” said Clara Berg­lund, chair of the Swedish Women’s Lobby, announcing the giveaway.

“It feels so important to contribute to this project. It is a gift to all second-grade high-school students, but it is also a gift to ourselves and future generations.”

Adichie’s essay was published in English last year. The 2012 TED talk has been watched by more than two million people on YouTube and was sampled by Beyoncé in her single Flawless, including the lines: “We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls: ‘You can have ambition, but not too much.’”

The novelist, in a video message for students played at the Stockholm launch event, said that, for her, “feminism is about justice”.

“I’m a feminist because I want to live in a world that is more just. I’m a feminist because I want to live in a world where a woman is never told that she can or cannot or should or should not do anything because she is a woman. I want to live in a world where men and women are happier. Where they are not constrained by gender roles. I want to live in a world where men and women are truly equal. And that’s why I’m a feminist,” said Adichie, who won the 2007 Orange prize for her novel Half of a Yellow Sun.

She continued: “When I was 16, I don’t think I knew what the word ‘feminist’ meant. I don’t think I knew the word at all. But I was a feminist. And I hope that the 16-year-olds that will read this book in Sweden will also decide that they’re feminists. Mostly, I hope very soon that one day we will not need to be feminists. Because we will live in a world that is truly just and equal.”

The organisations behind the project, which is supported by the UN Association of Sweden, the Swedish Trade Union Confederation, the Order of the Teaspoon, Unizon and Gertrud Åström, hope that teachers will integrate We Should All Be Feminists into their teaching, and will be distributing discussion guidelines to help pupils.